By OLIVER BROWN

In the wake of the state recording more than 1000 new COVID cases, the state government has announced a two week extension to the current stay-at-home orders currently in place for regional NSW.

The Premier and Deputy Premier announced the extension of the lockdown to midnight on Friday 10 September this morning (Thursday 26 August).

They said the decision was based on current health advice and a desire to protect regional communities and apologised to communities who were hoping to come out of lockdown this weekend.

“The decision to extend the lockdown is one to protect communities and protect the regions - we’re sitting on a knife-edge, it’s a tinderbox ready to explode,” Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional NSW John Barilaro said.

“I do apologise to those communities that don’t have cases today. But I put it this way - one of the reasons you may not have cases is because of the restrictions in place, minimising movement, because we know we’re a very interconnected community in regional and rural NSW."

Local numbers not improving

The 1019 newly announced cases today included a further 35 cases in the Western NSW Local Health District (WNSWLHD), taking the region's total to 389 active cases after five existing cases recovered and others moved out of the district.

The main cases of concern to the Western Plains region today included an additional two cases in Bourke.

At least 10 cases announced today were confirmed to have been infectious in the community.

The Brewarrina township was also highlighted as an area of concern after NSW Health identified traces of the virus in the sewage during the past 24 hours.

In his own health update earlier today, WNSWLHD Chief Executive Scott McLachlan reiterated the message that COVID could be active in any community and now was the time to follow the rules.

"We know that COVID is continuing to spread to additional communities - a new case we have (identified) in Forbes and an additional sewerage detection in Brewarrrina," Mr McLachlan said.

"This can be in your household, in the house next to you, in the supermarket or the service station down the road.

"This is time for us to come together, to do things differently, to stay apart from each other, to stay in your house and get through the next couple of weeks together - I know it's going to be a stressful time."

There are now more than 110 venues of concern that have been identified across WNSWLHD. The full list is available on the NSW Health website. 

Rule-breakers need to take responsibility

Western NSW Police Commander, Assistant Commissioner Geoff McKechnie also provided an update on the region's Operation Stay At Home.

He said he was disappointed to see that the message was not getting through to certain groups, with 110 infringements reported across the whole region in the past 24 hours.

"It's now coming to a point where we seem to be dealing with small group of people who, no matter the message or urgency, don't seem to care about their actions and the implications for the community," Assistant Commissioner McKechnie said.

"We're chasing people who are moving between our towns - COVID-positive cases - who are thinking it's a good idea to go to the next town and associate with people there, putting that whole community at risk.

Among yesterday's infringement notices were 12 in Brewarrina. Mr McKechnie said that with the likelihood of COVID being now in that community, this was unacceptable.

"We can keep writing out those notices all day long but at the end of it, it needs to be people taking responsibility," he said.

Testing still declining but numbers climbing at vaccination clinics

Today's update reported testing across WNSWLHD was still declining, with MR McLachlan saying numbers from Wednesday 25 August were down 20 per cent compared to the day before.

However, he said vaccinations across parts of the region, specifically at the pop-up ADF vaccination clinics, had been booming.

"Yesterday was the biggest day that we've seen with nearly 1800 people vaccinated - around 13 per cent of that was Aboriginal people," he said.

He said this was great to see as about 60 per cent of the currently active cases were members of the Aboriginal community and was glad the message urging them to get vaccinated was getting through.

A full list of currently available ADF vaccination hubs - today in Bourke is the last day - can be found here.

For all the latest information about COVID-19 across the Western Plains, be sure to check out our COVID-19 button.